Trending News: This $30 Device Can Unlock Just About Any Car Or Garage Door

Why Is This Important?

Long Story Short

RollJam, a homemade tool made by hacker Samy Kamkar, costs less than $50 and can unlock just about any car with a keyless-entry system.

Long Story

Nowadays it seems as if homemade hacking tools are becoming increasingly easy to come by. The newest one is named RollJam, and it’s a device that only costs about $30 to build. Made by hacker Samy Kamkar, RollJam is a radio device that’s smaller than a cell phone, and can defeat the “rolling codes” (one-time authentication codes) that remote-entry keys use to protect modern cars.

Basically, RollJam intercepts rolling codes sent from car keys, and stores them so that they can be used to unlock cars with ease. According to Fox News, the rolling codes system is proven and has secured tens of millions of cars and remote garage-door openers over the years.

But now consumers may not be able to trust it.

Kamkar created the tool for the Def Con conference in Las Vegas. According to Wired, Kamkar says that the reason he made RollJam “is to demonstrate to car and garage door companies that they need to make that upgrade to expiring codes, or leave their customers vulnerable to interception attacks like the one he’s demonstrated.”

It might be a good idea to not leave anything valuable in your car. Oh, and make sure to put your car somewhere safe. But not in your garage because apparently that's not safe either.

Time to buy a bike?

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: Are we going to have to move into the woods to get any sort of privacy?

Disrupt Your Feed: It looks like a good ole fashioned car key still works pretty well.

Drop This Fact: The Honda Accord was the most-stolen car in America in 2014.